They don’t care about the border. “The border” is a dog whistle for racism. If they cared, they wouldn’t have voted against the most recent bull. They would have spent actual money on illegal crossings. They would have earmarked funds for better holding facilities. The list goes on.
Yea, bigger problem is how fucked our ports of entry are at the moment. Not enough space or staff to process everything that crosses.
If this really is an invasion like the GOP wants to claim, let’s move some of that national “defense” budget into more ICE agents and more lawyers/judges in our immigration courts to process people. Let’s weed out these supposed invaders. (Psssst I’m willing to bet a lot of money that there won’t be any)
Why dont they just use the current laws and stop the illegal border crossings? Do you guys care about the illegal immigation? I just figured you would be wanting your politicians to stop it.
Many on the local level could not believe the Wagner rebellion could be happening without some degree of agreement with the Kremlin, the security officials said
The other side of ruling with an iron fist and micromanaging people. If you stop doing that, these people then just think this is all part of what is supposed happen and are unable to act on their own without explicit orders.
I think there were a lot of players up and down the ranks waiting to see which way the wind blew before casting for any given side.
With so many concerns that the coup had backing from either Putin or other power blocs, a whole lot of side players would have wanted to back a winning pony and were waiting on early outcomes. Equally, with Putin not providing decisive action, I'm sure that invited meaningful concerns that this was some sort of double-dealing or the beginning of a Putin-backed purge.
Another narrative: employment was up and workers were gaining power. Out of nowhere, JP Morgan Chase chairperson started going to meetings and talking about a recession, over and over. Other businesses took his lead and started raising prices. After a while we're no closer to a recession, but we have lost a lot in standard of living.
It’s pretty basic supply and demand. Inflation historically goes up in an economy when a lot of people want to buy stuff, and that stuff is in limited supply.
Workers had cash and stimulus money = higher demand
The pandemic fucked with good manufacturing, and transport = reduced supply
When there is less of something, and people have money, they’re willing to pay more to get their hands on the scarce thing. Companies pay more for chips, or to have first dibs on something from the port, and that increased cost is passed along to the consumer.
If it was merely an increase in costs, corporate profits should be neutral after they hike their prices to match. Same ratio going in and out.
What we actually saw was corporate profit margins going to record highs. Some sectors did see actual price increases–pandemic supply constraints, the Suez canal being blocked up by a shipping accident, and the war in Ukraine all did cause upward pressure on prices in some sectors. However, none of it could explain the data fully.
Even worse, those corporations saw 15-20% profit margins for the first time ever, and now their public stockholders expect them to keep doing it forever. This is insane. Big tech firms can see that kind of margin, but they’re the exception. Not even banks see those margins on the regular. The belief that they can has driven many of the layoffs from otherwise profitable companies this year.
Corporations used world events as a cover for increasing prices. They had a once in a century opportunity to cover their actions and took it. To be honest, it usually is the case that prices don’t just go up as a matter of greed. That’s not what happened this time.
If it was merely an increase in costs, corporate profits should be neutral after they hike their prices to match. Same ratio going in and out.
You might see that initially, but all of the little supply and demand changes start to inflate the overall value of the dollar, that starts to show up in profits.
Every company is affected differently during times of high inflation. I work for a fortune 50 company that had their earning take a hit because of inflated prices. That said, profit margins for many companies absolutely can and do inflate with the value of the currency.
Your profits are fuel for future investments, and if your finance team is doing their job correctly, they are making sure that profit is adjusted for inflation.
When a handful of corporations control entire industries, capitalism stops working.
It’s supposed to be a bunch of competitors trying to get as many sales as possible by having the lowest prices or highest quality.
But in the current economy, if a corporation raises their prices across the board, the rest raise their prices. The only times they lower prices, is straight to a loss to force small competitors out of business. The large corporations can deal without profits for six months, smaller companies go under and often have to sell to the giant corporations.
This cycle has been repeating for decades, it’s not hard to notice it
The only solution is breaking up those giant corporations. Republicans sure as shit won’t do it, but neither will the moderate wing of the Democratic party. It would cut into their donations too much.
If anything in the economy is “too big to fail” the solution is breaking them up, not bailing them out whenever necessary.
Do you see excess stock? Profits are not particularly high after the two years of costs that COVID created. Trillions of dollars were printed during COVID while people were not working and products were not being manufactured/farmed/repaired/…
There simply was/is more money floating around then stuff being produced. Unless God herself comes down and drops food/shelter/iPods from heaven, costs won’t come down. Failing that, it is up to us to produce these products otherwise nothing will change.
It also stops working when the vast majority of the population lacks capital. The recent experiments with a UBI in Kenya show this pretty well. Folks who decided on a lump-sum payment rather than monthly invested in creating businesses and were better off.
Why do people even try to say nothing happened with Panama papers. I’ll be the person this time and every time that shows LOTS has happened. From nearly day 1.
When a handful of corporations control entire industries... that is capitalism. Capitalism isn't some self-correcting system that benefits all, its a system that supports and benefits those who make the most profit possible. When companies have less competition and more control, they're better able to make money. And thus, are better at capitalism.
This isn't capitalism failing to function, this is capitalism working as intended. The "free-market" is an illusion created on hope and delusion.
What you’re doing is the same as saying universal healthcare and communism is the same thing…
All capitalism isn’t “free market”. The government (at least supposed to) regulate capitalism. There was a time in America when it would even break up giant corporations who had monopolies. Lots of Americans alive today were even alive when it happened.
Things changed in the 1990s when James Carville convinced people Bill Clinton caused the Dotcom boom with neoliberal economics.
Suddenly both parties were bending over backwards to funnel money to the wealthy at the expense of what’s left of the middle class.
You’re demonstrating exactly why capitalism doesn’t work. Once corporations capture politicians and grow fat, it is incredibly difficult to get them out. This isn’t an aberration. It’s inevitable in thew long run.
If Keynesians could implement their policies and hold them indefinitely, capitalism might work. They can’t.
About a decade ago, me and my family were part of the very movement that changed the Republican party into the beast it is today. We made it very clear to party members that moderates would not be tolerated. We demonized the RINOs as much as we demonized the Democrats, the Liberals and the Obamas. By primary season of 2016, the last influences of the old Republican party were stamped out. Trump was the achievement of the Tea Party, and how it flipped the neo liberal conservative party into a fascist one.
Blame the Democrats all you want for being milquetoast, weak, or ineffective in the face of the Republican party. As someone who has played for both teams, I have never seen the same fire from Democratic voters to change their party as I have from the Republicans. There is no party wide effort to weed out Democrats who work in the interests of companies only, or are essentially Republicans with the Democrat label. There has been no unified direction for the future Democrats want to see for the US other than the current status quo.
What we did in the Tea Party, is we got involved at every stage of government. We found out who our state and federal legislators were, and if they did not stand with our views, we primaried them out. We took trips to Washington as a church, or as a young Republican's association, and we rallied in front of every monument that they would allow us in front of. In our eyes, our goal was righteous, and we were in a battle for the soul of the country.
I abhor everything I was back then, and feel guilty for the present we have created today. But if there is one take away from my time in the Tea Party that I think could apply to Democrats is you don't have to settle for less. By all means vote for Biden again, but you should make it clear to every Democrat defending their seat next year that you won't be settling for spineless enablers. Now's the time to start campaigning progressive candidates to run against them. Any progressive you get elected should be seen as a victory, and every neo liberal who loses should take it as a message that they are no longer electable. You should practice that democracy as much as you can while you still have it.
I just interviewed someone who I’m pretty sure is a trans female. Her being trans didn’t come up, because it wasn’t relevant at all to the job position. We’re probably moving forward with her because she did better than the other candidates for the role.
It wasn’t an issue, and I doubt it’ll be an issue if she accepts the position because I don’t work with bigoted jerks. And this is in a very conservative state.
The court of public opinion is not and will not be on this person’s side. Your gender identity does not change your inalienable rights. I too hope this bigot rots in prison.
It was garbage because it wouldnt have done a single thing about limiting illegal immigartion. It would directly allow 5k a day, and then the only change is they would have to go to the port of entry, and then they would be allowed to go in if it allegly important. And that doesnt even get into how tens of billions in foreign war funding should be somehow attached to an american border bill.
By what process? I didn't ask what your goal was, I asked what the solution was. For example, you might favor a very cheap visa for migrant workers so that they could enter legally, work and contribute, and get on with their lives. That would drop illegal migration down to near 0, so is that a solution you'd be in favor of?
Step one would be stop illegal immigration, and reinstate the "Remain in Mexico" policy. Then I would be in favor of allowing in people that are compatible with american values or actually need asylum.
Its impossible to 100% stop it, but first thing would be to support the state national guard. It would be with the use of humans on the ground, walls, barbwire, and technology such as airplanes, balloons and other sensors. What are you getting at? Are you saying they cant stop it? From what I have heard, the illegal migration has gone from thousands a day in texas to a handful just by them taking action.
Thank you, that was an actual policy proposal. The other times I've asked you've just said, stop it, with no actual process for how to do so. That's why I've been saying. That you've been declaring it stopped, without suggesting a how.
Personally, I'm not convinced immigration is a problem. I think the way some people have screamed and cried and stomped their feet to prevent us from setting up good legal systems for taking people in are responsible for the current situation, where we are murdering human beings for daring to want to come to America. That seems pretty fucked up to me, and I don't see how killing people who it benefits America to let enter, is a good thing.
How do you not see millions of people crossing the border without being checked in anyway not a bad thing? How are they supposed to get jobs when to get a job would be illegal? I think the biggest issue is that it will overwhelm the lower income job market will not be able to compete with the new people. Also I would be concerned with people crossing the border with the direct intent to harm america via terrorist attacks or direct foreign government agendas.
So, the thing is that every study we've done on the matter says that in the long run, immigration benefits everyone, including the lowest income brackets. I would also point out that immigrants have a lower crime rate than american citizens. I don't think it's a problem, because no actual problem has been demonstrated. I hear a lot of theoreticals, what if they're terrorists, what if they bring fentanyl, but the fact is that most fentanyl is manufactured domestically. Stopping immigration won't help. Yes, we should absolutely have a cheap visa for immigrant workers so they can work legally, and ideally so they can swap jobs rather than being locked to one employer, a recipe for abuse. But that's a matter of changing laws, not of putting up barbed wire and armed men.
Its a lot more complicated than saying everyone benefits, I would say that the norther European countries have been harmed more by their immigration than helped. And the poor people of right now that cant complete with people that work harder for less would probably disagree that it will hellp them.
You are conflating immigration with illegal immigration, they are different things. Are you perfectly fine with millions of people just coming to the country with no verification or anything?
Those poor people of right now generally are not competing with illegal immigrants for jobs. They do jobs that americans do not want to do, and they bust their asses doing them for not enough money.
I have repeatedly advised a system of very cheap visas for people who want to come to america to work. They would then be verified, since we would have their information. They wouldn't be illegal, we have their information, they're in a better position to push for better pay and be treated like actual human beings. Where's the downside?
"Those poor people of right now generally are not competing with illegal immigrants for jobs."
I 100% disagree with this. When I lived in Oregon, I would directly hire only Mexicans instead of white people because they were better workers. If you go down to places like california, construction work has been completely turned into a hispanic immigrant occupation. If I could hire immigrants where I am now, I 100% would because they are much better than the poor people that live here.
So why is Florida having so much trouble now, with the recent laws being passed that drove out immigrants? Surely there are poor americans who are overjoyed to have access to those jobs, so it's unclear why they're simply going undone.
This is a causation vs correlation situation. I dont know what trouble florida is having, and I doubt any recent laws that have been passed would impact them so quickly.
The troubles started when they started talking about the law, and got worse when they passed it, and people leaving cited the law as a reason they left. In the sense that the world could have been made in motion five seconds ago, or it could be a simulation or something, but given that the world is what it appears to be and causes have effects, the evidence is pretty solid.
Really? Much was made of it in the news at the time. Still, it's been fucking over agriculture and construction, from what I can find. Here's a more recent piece. Now, as I've said, I think our current systems are exploitative and bad to people, but I don't see making life worse for migrants as a solution. America needs people willing to do this work, and Americans aren't materializing to do it. The migrants do want to be doing it, so let's make their entry legal, recorded, and safe, and extend them the same kinds of protections the rest of American labor has.
I can see what you are referring to. We do need people able to work, and the issue is bigger than immigration, and things can get out of whack when a policy changes. I dont know enough about the labor market in Florida or if those articles can be trusted. I can just say that immigrants compete with domestic workers. I am a fan of immigration, but I am not a fan of illegal immigration and it has to be limited. From where I personally am at, immigration helps me a lot, but I can see how it can harm others.
Trump’s lawyers warned that if a president can be prosecuted for actions taken while in office “such prosecutions will recur and become increasingly common, ushering in destructive cycles of recrimination,” adding that “Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist.”
If Presidents commit crimes in office, they should be held accountable. And if the Presidency ceases to exist because of the justice of accountability, then let the office perish in injustice.
Why don’t we just let them file their frivolous lawsuits in ‘28, and throw their asses out of court in discovery when they present 0 evidence, like what pretty much always happens with these imbeciles?!
good. let every presidential term end with the asshole being led away in handcuffs. the presidency as we know it needs to cease to exist. arrest all of them.
An ex-president is encouraging attacks on allies by a major enemy. It’s as simple as that. Once again, Trump proves he is a threat to the US. He’s literally a security risk.
NATO allies now know that vast swathes of the American electorate are willing to knowingly vote for probable Russian or Chinese assets, who won't have their back. If not in the next election, possibly in an election with the next few decades.
This has already been factored in. For example, given the timing, I doubt it's entirely a coincidence that the Japanese withdrew from their partnership with Lockheed Martin in favour of cooperation with BAE for a 6th generation fighter. Talk of (and funding for) EU strategic autonomy also increased dramatically after Trump's election. And I know plenty in the US like to complain about the EU not pulling its weight, historically not without reason, but in the longterm the Europeans moving further from the US won't result in more weapons sales for the US. Likely the opposite: Europe first.
When it comes to intelligence sharing, the US electing a Russian asset who shared classified documents with the Russians and likely got foreign assets killed, really isn't something that you can fix in a few years either. The damage is lasting if not permanent. Trump may be gone, but US institutions are still filled with his supporters and ideological fellow travellers.
Especially at a time when China is ascendent, it's possible that Trump has permanently fucked the US and that the zenith of US power and influence has already passed. That it is all downhill from here. Behold the decline and fall, let's all hold hands with our backs to the wall.
For the folks getting the thumbnail from MILFtrip.com because of "awesome kbin image caching bug". NO, that is not how the DoE is poised. That position is not of modest efficiency. And I highly doubt that would save consumers money on energy bills.
There are zero ways that anything with a MILF is "less energy-intensive".
Unfortunately we don’t have a great track record in the USA. The president of the confederacy only got a couple years in prison after the Civil War, and lived as a celebrity for a couple decades after that…
Ben Nimmo, chief of global threat intelligence for Meta, said government officials stopped communicating foreign election interference threats to the company in July.
That month, a federal judge limited the Biden administration’s communications with tech platforms in response to a lawsuit alleging such coordination ran afoul of the First Amendment by encouraging companies to remove falsehoods about covid-19 and the 2020 election. The decision included a specific exemption to allow the government to continue to communicate with the companies about national security threats, specifically foreign interference in elections. The case, Missouri v. Biden, is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has paused lower court restrictions while it reviews the matter.
…
The federal judge’s July 4 ruling prohibited key agencies — including the State Department, the FBI and DHS — from urging companies to remove “protected free speech” from the platforms. However, Trump-appointed Judge Terry A. Doughty appeared to acknowledge concerns the decision could dismantle election integrity initiatives, specifying the restrictions did not apply to warning companies of national security threats or foreign attempts to influence elections. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling removed some of the restrictions, including communication with the State Department.
I can appreciate the administration is “treading cautiously,” but the rulings specify that the restrictions don’t apply to foreign attempts to influence elections.
I wouldn’t return to work if you offered me the whole building.
for my entire career, 100% of my work has been on the computer. once in a while, I may have some client interaction, and for that videoconferencing is fin 99.99% of the time. the 0.01% it’s not, I can go on-site. I’ve never attended a meeting that couldn’t have been an email or that couldn’t be handled via videoconference. what managers I’ve had fall into 2 categories:
The Quite Ones: these are the good managers who send short emails regarding project needs/goals and periodically check in on progress, providing feedback when necessary.
The Overbearing Micromanagers: jerkwads who feel the need to constantly insinuate themselves into my process and assert their position of power just for the sake of it, often negatively affecting both my workflow and the end-results of the project itself. They send huge, monotonous emails full of corporate-speak which say very little, set regular meetings that waste time and accomplish nothing, and set capricious, pointless policies which often change equally capriciously. I suspect this is done because they’re too incompetent to do their actual jobs and are designed both distract from that and remind us “who’s boss.”
Obviously, the first can be dealt with 100% remotely, and the second has positioned themselves, through being terrible at their jobs and being terrible people in general, to require workers to be present, mostly to justify their own jobs which would amount to nothing if there were no employees physically present to subject to their petty torments.
so, yeah, give me my own office? that’s not gonna cut it, as it changes exactly 0 of the reasons why I never want to return to the office, which are the commute, the stifling work atmosphere, the management, and the fact that there’s 0 reason to ever be there physically anyway due to the nature of my work.
There is nothing wrong with LED lights. There is just a big problem with cheap, poorly designed LEDs. You can use proper optics and control the light exceptionally well and put it exactly where its needed with very little spill over or reflections up. You can also chose whatever color and color rendering index (CRI) you like but all of this costs more money and municipal bean counters are drunk on the lowest bidder. So we get glare bomb blue light shows. I used to design this stuff so feel free to ask questions.
So I’m a wedding photographer and in the past 3 years I have noticed an increased amount of the lights at venues strobe or have really bad banding when I set my shutter speed to higher than 120. My assumption is that the new LED lights are flickering at a consistent rate to save energy but at the cost of the photos I take. Is this the case? That cheaper LED lights will flicker like that?
Not sure why, but the high power LEDs you see in cars do this if they’re cheap or done poorly. Mine came with like an ant-flicker ballast or something.
You’re seeing the 60Hz sinusoid caused by using AC electricity. 60 peaks, 60 troughs – but the like is actually turning on and off 120 times per second when on AC, unless it’s first converted to DC. Cheap LEDs just feed AC.
So what I heard a long time ago is that all LED lights essentially strobe on and off constantly, faster than the human eye can detect, though i’m willing to bet the better ones are constructed in a way that you wouldn’t notice at all (whether with the naked eye, or through a high shutter speed camera, as you mentioned), but the shittier ones strobe more frequently and not at a rate that’s as smooth/consistent as the better ones. As a little anecdote, I bought a lower quality light-tablet for tracing a while back, and was getting crazy headaches after using it for maybe an hour or so. Had to stop using it, and I think it must be an example of what poor quality LEDs are like.
So LEDs can either be strobed or powered consistently with no blinking at all. It’s a design choice and it depends on how you convert the power from AC to DC and how you want to control the brightness of the LED. It’s cheaper to feed an LED power that is modulated/strobes so all the cheap vendors do that. You can also get away with strobing the LED to achieve a brightness assuming you do it at a very high frequency so our eyes don’t perceive it. If you buy a quality LED light fixture there should be no strobing effect what so ever.
So LEDs are generally very bright by default, and there’s a limit to how much you can really dim that. The solution used is often to flicker the LED at high speed, imperceptible to human eyes, called Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). Basically, by changing the percentage of time the LED is on (the width of the ON pulse) you change the perceived brightness off the light.
Cheap LED designs do this slower, cause the hardware and LEDs are cheaper. It’s not really to save energy, but to adjust brightness and manage heat.
Also, probably more importantly, cheap LED bulb designs just don’t deal with AC current as well, so you get the 60Hz flicker from the electrical line cause that doesn’t get regulated out correctly when converting to DC.
The strobing is due to the way they’re powered. When converting AC power to DC power, you can either convert the positive half of the AC sine wave (half rectified) or both positive and negative sides of the AC wave (full rectified). Cheap lights use half rectifiers so as the AC feeds in, the light is only getting powered half the time and off the other half of the time. This happens so rapidly that we don’t really see it with our eyes, but with a camera it’s very noticeable. AC cycles at 60 cycles per second (in the US), so it makes sense that you’re seeing it at 120 shutter speed as this equates to 60fps.
I’d consider talking to some of these venues about it as I assume they’re typically used for events that’ll be filmed, so using shitty lighting is ruining it for everyone same as if they had the toilets sitting in the middle of the dance floor.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) — none other than the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — flat-out said that Russian propaganda had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”
McCaul suggested conservative media was to blame.
“There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical [to what they’re saying on Russian state television] — on our airwaves,” McCaul said.
He also cited “these people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.”
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